Advertising

In the early days of human spaceflight in the 1960s, public curiosity about astronauts was fueled by regular headlines in the media. Products selected for the space program were perceived to be exceptional, and promoters were quick to exploit this by playing up the fascination and mystery surrounding spaceflight. A crystallized, dehydrated, orange-flavored beverage called Tang was touted as "what the astronauts drink," and sales skyrocketed as the public clamored to have what the astronauts had. With the space age, thus, came space-themed advertising.

Consumers are bombarded daily with multimedia advertisements, coaxing people to buy, choose, or react to a myriad of products and services. Advertisers are hired to promote these products and services to specific markets based on a careful calculation of a target population's propensity to consume. To appeal to this possibility, advertisers strive to stay in the mainstream of the target audience in fashion, entertainment, food, and new technology by implanting a brand with a message that is crafted to be remembered by the recipient. Over the years, space themes have been used as a backdrop for many new products.

Before humans were orbiting Earth, space-themed advertisements were uncommon because the general public did not connect with outer space. Now, in the early twenty-first century, with discussion of futuristic orbiting hotels and launch adventure trips within the realm of technological possibility, space as a backdrop or theme for advertising is well-established.

Some fantastic concepts have been considered for advertising in space. For example, one firm considered using an Earth-based laser to beam messages onto the Moon. They soon realized this was impractical, however, because the images needed to be about the size of Texas to be visible to earthlings!

Pizza Hut, Inc., contracted with a Russian launch firm to affix a 9-meter-high (30-foot-high) new corporate logo on a Proton rocket carrying aloft a service module to the International Space Station and scheduled for launch in November 1999. Advertising the event prior to the launch date gave Pizza Hut international recognition, and the company expected 500 million people to watch the live televised event. The launch was planned to coincide with a release of Pizza Hut's transformed millennium image; the launch, however, was postponed for eight months because of technical problems.

Pepsi, the soft drink company, paid a large sum of money so that Russian cosmonauts would unveil a newly designed brand logo on a simulated "can" during missions to the Russian space station Mir in May 1996. The company has also pursued smaller scale promotional ventures in the U.S. space program since 1984.

NASA and other outer space agencies have researched the profitability of permitting advertising through the display of logos on space hardware, such as the International Space Station. While there is a market for such advertising, studies suggest that demand would not necessarily be sustained beyond the novelty of the first few paying customers.

Space.com, one of several space-related web sites that appeared in the dot-com boom of the late 1990s, derived significant revenue from advertising banners at the web site. Interestingly, the advertising content tended to relate to very down-to-Earth necessities—credit cards, cars, goods and services—and not space merchandise or otherworldly creations.